Research Studies
Welcome to Research with East!
Please note the use of the word “with,” not “at” or “for”. Using “with” signals our deep commitment to research that is collaborative, participatory, and emancipatory. Building on recent calls for engaged scholarship in the academy, CUES promotes researching alongside the school communities, in pursuit of authentic and useful accounts of school change.
To this end, we believe the University of Rochester’s EPO partnership with East is an exciting opportunity to take what researchers know about education to a school that will benefit from it. In doing so, we conduct research, producing a collection of practitioner briefs, research articles, and conference presentations that support schools like East, located in urban districts, facing similar challenges and implementing innovative initiatives. We have not only conducted studies with East but also in other urban school locations; our findings support urban school transformation nationwide.
We are building a body of research about urban education transformation, organized in two large categories: Transformative Culture Research and Transformative School Culture Research and Transformative Teaching and Learning Research, to share freely and openly with anyone who is interested. Some publications will appeal to a research audience, others to a practitioner audience, and some to both. Check back periodically to see what new work is emerging!
Conducting Research at East
Researchers interested in working alongside East must submit an application to the East Research Committee.
Transformative School Culture Research
Improving School Attendance
- Marsh, V. L. (Winter, 2019). Understanding chronic absenteeism: What research tells us about poor attendance at school.American Educator.
- Marsh, V. L., & Nelms, S. (2019, January). 4 ways to improve urban school attendance: Engaging environments, personal contact with families, systems, and logistics make the difference.District Administration.
- Marsh, V. L., Meier, S., Festenstein, L. & Nelms, S. (February, 2017). Attendance Up Close: Reflecting on School Visits CUES practitioner brief.
- Marsh, V. L. (2016). Attendance Practices That Work: What Research Says, What Practitioners Say (December 2016). CUES practitioner brief.
Transforming School Culture
- Uebbing, S. (2021). Reversing a downward spiral: A former superintendent guides the restart of an urban school by building up three legs of success. School Administrator.
- Marsh, V. L., & Nelms, S. (March, 2020). How student voice transformed East High. Educational Leadership.
- Conn, A., Nelms, S., & Marsh, V.L. (October, 2020). Creating a culture of care: A school-based behavioral therapy intervention builds resilience for students with high levels of trauma. Educational Leadership.
- Promoting Youth Resilience and A Culture of Health at East (PYRCH) Collaborative 3-Year Summary Report (July 2019).
- Taylor, J., & Kawakyu O’Connor, N. (2018). East EPO Community School Needs Assessment Report. National Center for Community Schools.
- Promoting Youth Resilience and A Culture of Health at East (PYRCH) Collaborative 2-Year Summary Report (July 2018).
- Marsh, V. L. (October, 2017). Becoming Restorative: Three Schools Transitioning to a Restorative Practices Culture. CUES practitioner brief.
- Marsh, V.L. (June, 2017). Restorative Practice: History, Successes, Challenges & Recommendations. CUES practitioner brief.
School-University Partnership
- UR East High: Transforming an urban high school through a unique University partnership (Joanne Larson & colleagues) uses ethnography to explore how this partnership impacts culture. This research was initially supported by a research grant from the Spencer Foundation.
- Larson, J. & Nelms, S. (2021). Collaborating for equity in urban education: Comprehensive reform in an innovative university/school partnership. Urban Education, 1-32. DOI: 10.1177/004208592110170976
- Marsh V., Nelms S., Peyre S., & Larson J. (2022). How a university and a school district made change together. Phi Delta Kappan, v104 n1 37-43
Reducing Bullying in School Communities
- Marsh, V. L., & Nelms, S. (May, 2020). Partners in Fighting Cyberbullying: How a university-school collaboration is reshaping school climate and strengthening relationships.School Administrator.
- Marsh, V. L. (October 2018). Bullying in School: Prevalence, Contributing Factors, and Interventions. CUES practitioner brief.
- Marsh, V. L., (October, 2018). Bullying in School: Summary of Findings. CUES practitioner brief.
Reducing School Suspensions
- (Rob Snyder) a decision-making dissertation, is designed to support the continuous growth of the East Upper School by studying alternative methods for addressing students who are repeatedly assigned to In-School Suspension (ISS). (Dissertation)
Increasing Parent Engagement
- (Shalonda Garfield) seeks to inform a decision for determining an alternative that support the continuous improvement of increasing parent engagement at East Lower School. (Dissertation)
Confronting Race, Racism and Privilege in Schools
- Confronting Race, Racism and Privilege in Schools. (Kara Finnigan, Leslie Myers, Shaun Nelms & Kevin McGowan). September, 2015. District Administrator.
- Marsh, V.L. (2022). Fighting inequities of design: A conversation with Shaun Nelms. Voices in Urban Education, 50(2), 74-79.
Other
- Broken bridges: The role of brokers in connecting educational leaders around research evidence. (Finnigan, K.S., Daly, A. J., Caduff, A., & Leal, C. C., 2021). In M. Weber & I. Yanovitzky (Eds.), Networks, Knowledge Brokers, and the Public Policymaking Process (pp. 129-154). New York, NY: Palgrave- MacMillan.
- The Question of Incorporating 6th Grade into Middle and High School Configurations. (Marsh, V.L., Larson, J.L, Kawakyu-O’Connor, N.K., Greenwich, J.C. (May, 2017). CUES practitioner Brief.
- Promoting a Culture of Resilience at East: A Multimodal Approach (Susan Yussman) explores how a school-based, multi-component intervention improve student outcomes in the domains of nutrition, mental health and sexual health. (Dissertation).
- Title 1 Study (American Institutes for Research) provides a detailed analysis of the types of strategies and activities implemented in Title I schoolwide program (SWP) and targeted assistance program (TAP) schools, how different configurations of resources are used to support these strategies, and how local officials make decisions about the use of these varied resources
- Assessing the Feasibility of Implementing the Center for Human Athleticism Musculoskeletal Performance and Prevention (CHAMPP) Intervention on East High School Adolescent Athletes (Calvin L. Cole, PhD Department of Orthopaedics, Center for Musculoskeletal Research) assesses the feasibility of enrolling and studying adolescent athletes from East High School into a program that will provide injury and academic performance monitoring, athletic performance training (for injury prevention), and academic assistance.
Transformative Teaching and Learning Research
Literacy
- UR East High: Transforming an urban high school through a unique University partnership (Joanne Larson and colleagues) uses ethnography to explore how this partnership impacts culture. This research was initially supported by a research grant from the Spencer Foundation.
- Larson, J., Atkins, G., & Duret, E. (2022, October). Best. Class. Ever.: Doing and being Hip Hop in school. New York: Teacher’s College Press. This book explores how how urban youth and their teachers (Larson as co-teacher) design and implement a student led class on Hip Hop
- Larson, J., Pies, S., & Bethmann, C. (2021, April). More than managing inequities: Exploring the role critical literacy might play in English education. AERA Annual Meeting (Virtual).
- Larson, J., Duret, E., Rees, J., & Anderson, J. (2021). Challenging the autonomous wall: Literacy work in an urban high school. Journal of Literacy Research.
- Larson, J., Morris, T., and Shaw, K. (2019). Sarcasm as pedagogy of love: Using ironic speech acts in urban high school English. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.
- Kinloch, V., Larson, J., Orellanna, M.J., & Lewis, C. (2016). Literacy, equity, and imagination: Researching With/In Communities. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 1-19.
- READ 180 Universal East High School Efficacy Study (Consortium for Policy Research Education) investigates the link between enrollment in READ 180 Universal and student reading performance at East High School, Rochester, NY.
- Consortium for Policy Research Education (2021). READ 180 at East High School, Rochester, NY. Teachers College, Columbia University.
- Identity Negotiation and Development Through Creative Writing at East (Eleni Duret) explores how high school students engage creatively with their own identity and then communicate such engagement through creative writing. (Dissertation)
- (2022) Unbound potential: identity as a process understood through creative writing, New Writing
- Powerful Literacies in a High School Journalism Class (Valerie Marsh, Jayne Lammers, Elizabeth Conroy) explores how best to support English teachers in amplifying youth voices in historically marginalized student populations via powerful literacies.
- Marsh, V. (2o22, July). Disrupting Segregated Knowledge Flows: Reflections from an Evolving Abolitionist. English Education; Urbana Vol. 54, Iss. 4
- Marsh, V. L., Lammers, J. C, & Conroy, E. (2021). Students as changemakers: Five steps to advocacy research. English Journal, 111(2), 56-63.
- Marsh, V. L., Lammers, J. C, & Conroy, E. (2020, November). Researchers as thought buddies: Examining a Research-Practice Partnership through design-based research [Invited presentation] at University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education and Human Development Wednesday Talk Series, Rochester, NY
- Marsh, V. L., Lammers, J. C, & Conroy, E. (2020, April). Researchers as thought buddies: Examining a Research-Practice Partnership through design-based research [Roundtable discussion] at American Association Research Association (AERA) annual meeting, San Francisco, CA (Conference canceled).
- YPAR: Exploring New Literacies and Critical Literacy Pedagogy in a Virtual Teaching and Learning Environment (Alexa E. Basile) illuminates a particular kind of school-embedded Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project that adds to the collective understanding of what facilitates and challenges YPAR work in urban school settings.
- Basile, A. E. (2021). YPAR: Exploring New Literacies and Critical Literacy Pedagogy in a Virtual Teaching and Learning Environment [Doctoral dissertation, University of Rochester]. Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Mathematics
- Creating a Model for Sustainable Ambitious Mathematics Programs in High Needs Settings: A Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration (Jeff Choppin, William Zahner, Cindy Callard, Shaun Nelms). This study is a collaboration between researchers, professional development leaders, teachers, coaches, administrators, and students to: (1) understand the demands created throughout all stakeholder groups when implementing an ambitious secondary mathematics program in high-need contexts; (2) identify the resources and organizational dynamics necessary to address the demand and thus sustain the program; and (3) articulate a model of sustainable ambitious reform that has validity across multiple stakeholders within and across implementation contexts.
- Zahner, W., Green, C., Tenney, K., Pelaez, K., Choppin, J., & Al, S. (2021). What is ambitious mathematics teaching? A literature synthesis. Forty-third annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education Philadelphia, PA.
- Choppin, J., & Merliss, G. (2022). Exploring the impact of COVID on an ambitious mathematics program in a high poverty context. Paper presented at the 2022 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA.
English Language Learners
- ELL Learning (Lia Festenstein) attempted to determine whether or not the Support Room model assisted English Language Learners (ELLs) in attaining core credits or improved their Regents exam pass rates in the 2016 June Regents administration. (Dissertation)
- Educating English Language Learners (ELLs) (Valerie L. Marsh and colleagues). This brief pieces apart the challenges, history, theory, research, and instructional best practices in ELLs education through a review of literature. A resource guide for researchers and practitioners is included.
- Marsh, V. L. (September, 2018) Best Practices for Educating English Language Learners: History, Controversy, and a Path Forward . CUES practitioner brief.
Social Studies
- Ethical and Cultural Commitments in Adolescents’ Political Thinking: A Design Study (Kevin Meuwissen) serves two core purposes:
- to generate and utilize new tools and methods for investigating ethical and cultural commitments that underlie adolescents’ political thinking relative to public policy problems; and
- to draw from that investigation’s outcomes to develop, implement, and study the results of a secondary-level curricular and instructional intervention designed to promote political discourse where students’ policy positions and their ethical and cultural underpinnings are explicitly linked.
Science
- Veteran Urban Science Teacher Identity in the Midst of University Governance: A Case Study (Michael Occhino) explores teacher identity development. (Dissertation)
- Covid Connects Us is multiyear project funded by the National Science Foundation’s Division for Research K-12 (with earlier funding from the Greater Rochester Health Foundation) committed to examining the role of culture-setting units and professional learning communities in fostering justice-centered educators and classrooms
- Luehmann A., Zhang, Y., Merliss, G., Sullivan K., Scipio, D., & Pugh, P., (April 2023). The Role of a Culture Setting Unit to Nurture Justice-Centered Ambitious Teaching & Learning. NARST, Chicago,2023.
- Luehmann, A., & Zhang, Y. (May, 2021). COVID Connects Us: A culture-setting collaboration and unit. Virtually presented at 2021 STEM for All Video Showcase
Athletics
- The Relations of Perceived Autonomy-supportive Physical Education Teaching to Students’ Motivation, Performance, and Skill Learning (Edward Deci) examines the relations of interpersonal teaching styles to the promotion of students’ engagement, motor learning, and performance in physical education (PE) classes.
- Assessing the Feasibility of Implementing the Center for Human Athleticism Musculoskeletal Performance and Prevention (CHAMPP) Intervention on East High School Adolescent Athletes (Calvin Cole and colleagues) assesses the feasibility of enrolling and studying adolescent athletes from East High School into a program that will provide injury and academic performance monitoring, athletic performance training (for injury prevention), and academic assistance.
- Cole, C. L., Vasalos, K., Nicandri, G., Apt, C., Osterling, E., Ferrara, Z., … & Rizzone, K. (2020). Use of Fitbit Data to Evaluate the Effects of an Athletic Performance and Injury Prevention Training Program on Daily Physical Levels in Underrepresented Minority Female High School Athletes: A Prospective Study. Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, 4(2), 370-376.
Assessment
- Marsh, V. (2023). Standards-Based Grading: History, Practices, Benefits, Challenges, and Next Steps [White Paper]. The Center for Urban Education Success at the University of Rochester.